"RealGame is a better environment to practice than real ERP systems"
Assistant Professor
at Linnaeus University, Sweden
Courses with RealGame:
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Supply Chain Information Systems
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Business Process and Supply Chain Management
Level: Master
Hana Hulthén
I already had experience with other tools, and I really didn't want to learn something new. But then I just thought maybe I can give it try and I realized that RealGame is much better than those tools that I used previously. It was a perfect match to what I needed in terms of the scope and type of exercise. One way of how I use RealGame is to help the students to understand the different transactions that you can do in the traditional ERP system. RealGame provides a more simplified way of showing the different transactions and the modules in the system including like the finances, production, sales, marketing, purchasing and business analytics - the complete ecosystem of all these things. In my course, I also use a real ERP system from companies from the most known providers that are there in the market, but they don't have such a good environment to practice the transactions or the activities that take place in the ERP system. When browing the market, I was searching for something that would allow me to have more network or dyadic relationship, where you have two actors that you can actively play or simulate the behavior of two actors. RealGame Network was a the only business simulation that allows students to play for both the manufacturer and the supplier RealGame is very practical from the teaching point of view. I do not need to prepare new materials every year, because the students cannot copy the answers from previous years. For every team, the data is different, and it depends on what decisions they make. Therefore, they all arrive to different results. I need to also highlight why I am so satisfied with this tool is the incredible support by the people working at RealGame. RealGame solution is very flexible, you use it online and in the classroom with different groups sizes. Additionally, I think the learning curve is better and definitely very positive feedback from the students.
RealGame simplifies my teaching and gives students hands-on experience
Bente Flygansvær
Associate Professor
at BI Norwegian Business School, Norway
Courses with RealGame:
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Supply Chain Management
Level: Bachelor
I use RealGame in teaching Supply Chain Management to third year Bachelor level students. It's also a course that's open for exchange students. RealGame is a great tool for teaching, because it gives the students knowledge about supply chain management, about the field, and the experience of actual managing a supply chain. RealGame provides a great basis to work in teams and to learn how to organize themselves, act together in dynamic environment. For me as a teacher too, it simplifies my teaching when I can use a tool that gives the students hands-on experience and I don't have to find the complicated examples and illustrations because they are actually doing the example. So it helps me to teach a perspective that's not easily conveyed in an analogue example. I get a lot of good feedback from the students on the game. Typically they find it a little bit overwhelming when we start and then they realise that they can manage, and they all think it's great fun to get that experience. My course is structured with a set of lectures after which the students are introduced to RealGame. This way, the students are getting their practical experience in doing what we have been through in lectures. So for me it's about them trying out supply chain management in relation to the fact how a set of actors have to work together. The students are experiencing what that actually means and how complicated it is. And I want to give students the sense of supply chain perspective and that is particular something that they will experience with RealGame.
"By the end of the RealGame, students were all working together as a team, making decisions and understanding how different business processes work together"
Hugh Clack
Senior Lecturer & International Studies Coordinator
at South Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences,
Finland
Courses with RealGame:
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Customer Insight and Customer Experiences
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Digital Teamwork
Level: Bachelor
I use RealGame in my courses Customer Insight and Customer Experiences and Digital Teamwork for first year students. It is important for students at that stage to understand the relationships between sales and marketing and production and logistics; how these things are directly related. With RealGame students have really good experiences of it. Understanding of relations between different business functions: The simulation links all of the different business processes together and gives the students a real understanding of how a decision is made in one department, it affects another department and another department and so on that they understand how the decision affects the whole business. RealGame helps to illustrate what it would be like if they were working in a company, taking care of these things such as in enterprise resource planning (ERP). Lead times: One of the concepts that illustrate with RealGame is lead times. Students had no idea of lead times. They thought when a customer orders something from a factory, the factory just makes it and then delivers it. However, you have to understand that there are many, many customers ordering from that company and lots of different production going on. And to do that you also have to make sure you order raw materials to be able to do your production And then but the factory cannot immediately deliver them. And if you don't get those raw materials on time, your customers are being let down. So, students need to understand those relationships as well. Why are early deliveries bad? Students were not understanding that part first of all because if I order something and it comes early, I'd be really happy about it, but it does not work like this in business. Customers can get annoyed when they have their deliveries too early. SInce they now have to store them somewhere, and they don't always have the space to store them because the goods normally go directly into manufacturing. So now you can be very unhappy with your supplier that they have sent you those things and you've got nowhere to put them until you're ready to use them. Positive students’ feedback When we have a feedback session after RealGame, students say that now they really understand how these things affect operations and they understand why decision making has to be done in a certain order and why you have to think of different things. Many students also found it difficult to get to grips with placing orders for raw materials for production, that they were waiting for an order to come in, and only then thinking about placing orders for raw materials after they had planned the production. And many of them were going through the game at the beginning where they had zero production because they had no raw materials, because they had ordered them, but they had to wait for them. This was happening because students were making decisions individually. Impact on teamwork skills By the end of the RealGame, students were all working together as a team, making decisions and understanding that if you need to produce something, you need to place an order for raw materials and so on.
"We are using RealGame for over 10 years"
Head of MBA programmes, Procurement and Public Procurement
at Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences
Kaija Haapasalo
RealGame is used on SCM courses for both international and Finnish Bachelor Programs at Helsinki Metropolia UAS
We have been using RealGame in Metropolia University of Applied Sciences for over 10 years as part of our Supply Chain Management courses. In Metropolia Business School, all our first year students of international bachelor and Finnish bachelor degree programs have courses with RealGame. Some courses include RealGame to introduce the operational part of supply chain management. Other courses use newer versions of RealGame to focus more on purchasing or on subcontracting networks. RealGame shows how all processes are connected and provides you with a lot of really concrete elements that you can demonstrate relating to pricing in inventory management, resource planning, capacity planning, and what it actually means in practice. Another element of the simulation is that the students actually have to work together and under the pressure to make the decisions regarding their own company. Students practise understanding of inventory management and supplier base (pricing, payment terms, delivery times and methods) and production management (working shifts planning, costs etc.). For example, you can illustrate a situation when other teams bought the stock from suppliers if a team is late with their purchases, and various other situations. Additionally, you can teach finance related and accounting related topics such as difference of income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow. RealGame is a very good game and tool to teach students about the performance and performance follow-up because the game produces so many different reports and KPIs and we can have a look at. Normally, I let students play for some time and then we'll stop and have a look together at how they are doing. I am pointing out to them where they have problems. It helps them to understand what they have to fix in the next simulation days and weeks to compete. Overall, I can say that RealGame is very realistic and I see improvement in concepts’ understanding after simulation. Students are always looking forward to the game and we usually get very positive feedback from our students.
Using RealGame in Capstone Courses
Reza Movarrei
Postdoctoral Researcher at Aalto University, Finland
RealGame was used in a Capstone course in Information and Service Management
Level: Bachelor
We used RealGame for the Capstone course in Information and Service Management. It consisted of short lectures - refreshments of the principles and the skills that will be used. After every lecture, students had an opportunity to apply those things in the simulation. For each simulation session we gave assignments that addressed the skills that we'd be using in the following sessions. So, students had an opportunity to do the theoretical part and to decide which strategy they’d be following if something happened to a specific supplier and then they would actually experience some supplier going off in the next simulation. RealGame allows to illustrate specific supply chain phenomena, for example, balancing production, production planning, calculating the supply chain requirements, With RealGame we were able to create and illustrate bumps in the supply or in the market, which maybe 10 years ago wasn't the case. But now it happens because of the wars with the sanctions, with the pandemic, with climate change affecting production. It is now basically normal to see huge fluctuations in the reliability of supplies and also in transportation to different locations and reaction of markets. One of the big benefits for teaching was that the students were encouraged for division of labour, so it was not one person doing it or playing the simulation. Students had to cooperate with each other, focus on a range of things, and collectively improve the KPIs. Each part is with one person and then their responsibilities are interdependent. This is quite relevant in reality, since students could learn that someone else's job directly affects their job and the other way around. They get to see the “we either succeed together or fail together” approach. In addition, the range of data and the combination of the KPIs were quite good in RealGame. Almost all simulation games have basic indicators and stuff. But one thing that differentiates RealGame is the dashboard offered to the players. There they can get the big picture, the overall status of the company, the parameters that they can actually play with.
RealGame in Teaching Accounting
"With Realgame, students look at true numbers, true key figures from the accounting point of view."
Saara Manninen
Lecturer at Kajaani University of Applied Sciences, Finland
Courses about
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Management accounting and financial accounting
Level: Bachelor
I use RealGame in several courses. In each of them we start with the basic content of the course and when students have gained the basic knowledge about management accounting or financial accounting, we play RealGame. The main idea is to understand business operations: how to sell, how to take care of procurement and how to manage production. We look at all the information from the accounting point of view. Together with students, we - follow the key figures in the beginning of the game session. - decide what to focus on when we are talking about key figures When we are playing RealGame, students get to know the business processes better, because they have by themselves played and operated, managed processes of selling, procurement, production. RealGame generates data like income statements or balance sheets. And after playing, students have a better overview behind numbers. For example what forms the income statement, profit and loss account and what the balance sheet means. With Realgame, students look at true numbers, true key figures of business from the accounting point of view. The students feedback is positive. For example, students have said that “OK, now they understand how many things we have to notice when selling, managing procurement or production” or “Now i understand the difference between cash and profit”. Sometimes students have difficulties to understand the difference between purchases and accounts payable and also sales and accounts receivable. RealGame helps to illustrate these terms well. I think RealGame Business Intelligence* is a valuable aspect. It gets students the basic idea how they can handle information in real life. When students are hands-on, they get their own experience and knowledge, I think without RealGame it would be much harder to achieve. *RealGame Buisness Intelligence is a built in tool in the simulation that generates visualise data across dozens of KPIs
"With RealGame you see how all business functions are connected together"
Jagat Kunwar
Senior Lecturer at South Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences, Finland
Courses with RealGame:
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Supply Chain Information Systems
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Business Process and Supply Chain Management
Level: Bachelor
With RealGame I teach both supply chain management and strategic operations courses. RealGame covers lots of the functions which are part of the course content: starting from inventory to marketing, order processing, etc. Sometimes theoretical concepts like stock out problems, production planning are a little bit difficult to understand for the students. And RealGame gives us a really good idea of the processes as the data is updated constantly and learners see how it works. I notice an improvement in students' problem solving and application of theoretical concepts to real life in supply chain management and operations management in almost every course. RealGame improves the experience of learning, since it helps to make decisions in real time because you have to discuss with your team members and divide the labour wisely. Another key learning that most of our students mention is that RealGame is really like a real business where you have to plan throughout different steps of the processes and you have to communicate and to be timely. I would say that the most important learning with RealGame is that you see right away how all business functions are connected together. In teaching, the simulation fits for both bachelor's and master's programs. You can separately concentrate on different topics. Sometimes you might be only talking about marketing and order processing and sometimes you might just be dealing with inventory management related problems like stock out and capacity.
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